Muse
by coffee shop poet
Summary: he could say his existence was illogical. two-shot; spock/uhura.
1. Prologue: Human, Anonymous

_**The **_first thing a Vulcan would dare say in a situation as emotionally compromising as this, would be a high source of irritation for Spock.

"It is illogical."

Spock could say his existence was illogical. The binding of two worlds, both apart in almost every way, and he was stretched and pulled and wrenched between the two.

Perhaps, in his youth, he was attempting to rebel against the cruelties of rationality. Of its evasive course amidst his constant battle against the deep-threaded emotions within him. Flowers taken root, their spidery veins reaching deep into the core of his heart.

There was his mother. The water which fed those incorrigible roots. Every last bit of her that she had relinquished to him the moment he was born, and he cherished the nourishment of her omnipresence in him. He was young yet, still considered adolescent according to the Vulcan culture. But to humanity – he was a grown man.

She would understand. In her sympathy, in her human weakness, as they called it, she always understood her son. He was the product of her rogue tale of love and light years, and so she cherished him.

It was oddly disconcerting, having no place in either worlds. On Vulcan, he was tormented for his human eyes, the feelings that flourished in colors while their sight remained listless and grey. On earth, he was too foreign and rigid for their loose community. A cosmic outcast. But, as the oxymoronic saying went - a beautiful disaster. If Spock could ever be considered beautiful to either society.

The first time he saw her, it was a pale yellow morning. Breakfast, if one was to rummage through the particulars. And he wasn't hungry, which he attributed to the doubt that had begun to accost his stomach. Something like nervousness, his mother once told him, when he'd asked about the strange sensation. Instead of eating, he silently praised the mild charm of the unfurling day.

Shadows were a distant vague dream in this illuminated haven, and the wind was like perfume, soft and ethereal in its pensive travels.

Years after his rejection of his accepted admission to the Science Academy on Vulcan.

Mere months since he'd become a teacher.

Mere minutes since he'd become inspired by a woman he'd never met.

The data slate before him was blank and lifeless, droning only to accommodate his hesitation. But as soon as he saw her slide with fluid ease into the chair beside her green-tinged companion, acquiescent to the glow of the sun, her skin alive with lush heat, he could not contain himself. Irrational. Illogical. All which described the contradictive insurgence to the creed of Vulcan reason. But beautiful, nonetheless.

_And behold the shadowed morning,  
A sun, tyrant over his haze.  
Drinking beauty, forgoing reason,  
Over which the mind holds sway._

_The bloom of orchids do not bow,  
Merely to scientific touch of hand,  
But to drinking beauty, forgoing reason  
A graze of sentimental man._

_She is the shadowed morning,  
She lives the perfumed air,  
She drinks the beauty, forgoing reason  
For when is logic ever fair?_

Spock had his reasons. He had his logic.

And after one look, one brush of his hand over the empty data slate, he could only grant his silent gratitude to her fortuitous arrival.

_Human_, by _Anonymous_, he scrawled across the electronic page.

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I am new to the fandom. And because of my love for both poetry and Spock/Uhura, I must draw a connection between the two. I will keep Spock canon, as he is half-Vulcan, but explore his human side too. This IS a full length fic, and it IS Spock/Uhura. But a softer, and different approach in their Academy years. Spock is teacher, and Uhura his student. Perhaps, later, they will discover there are more things to learn from than just logic and mortal attraction itself.

Spock is an anonymous poet in this fic, and Uhura becomes his muse. He publishes his poetry, and Uhura finds it. How ironic? Well, that's later in the story. Not much of a spoiler, I assure you. Please review and let me know if my work is acceptable, and I shall begin sifting through the stories here, and start reviewing myself. :)

Thank you for taking the time to read my prose. Poetry is written by me.

Disclaimer - Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry and JJ Abrams.


	2. Darkness and Light

The world was ever-changing.

Spock knew this, almost as well as he knew the face of certainty itself. The way he knew the supple porcelain skin on the back of his hand. That tapering brow and hard, angled jaw in the reflective planes of a mirror. Both worlds were perpetual; neither stopped growing, and never halted for the sake of second glances.

It was a day bereft of any sort of structure. Just for soothing ruffled souls, or resting overwrought minds after a long week of academic schedule. And as the first days of the term settled into the reality of their lives, both instructor and the instructed, the weariness settled in.

Long months of relaxation would be compensated for in a matter of weeks, and it was grueling.

But for Spock, it was merely repose for his senses. Too sharp and focused they had been on the concrete of society that they had neglected the soft frailty of inspiration and its many faces beneath the touch of the tangible realm. It drew across itself the haze of parted anonymity as they marched by.

It wasn't that it wasn't partial toward being exhumed from its obscurity, but that it wanted to be desperately searched for. After a mere week of submergence beneath the dream of poet's existence, Spock knew this, and had learned well from the mistake of letting it pass by. If he never stopped to watch them in their vague absconding, he would miss them entirely.

Entranced by the perfection of the morning, Spock was lured into the fading summer veil. Hints of autumn were coursing through the veins of the trees, turning their precious leaves with a staining pallor. The sky was streaked with white tufts of thin clouds, useless to the repopulation of water, but a remedy for the sun's belligerent heat.

The city was swathed in habitual frenzy, the whir of machines pricking the ends of his inquisitive ears and he earned a few complimentary fleeting looks from passing spectators. Out of a sole wish for ambiguity in his poetic odyssey, Spock drew a slack cap over his ostentatiously sharp ears and slanting brow, deeming him nameless amongst his fellow pedestrians.

Buildings seemed to grow like sprouts, ever-changing, and always seamlessly moving from varying spaces within the busy metropolis.

The people seemed to adopt the tendencies of their home, altering expressions, or appearance altogether. But as Spock came to know the etiquette of human nature, a side of his heritage he never truly became acquainted with in light of his desperation to be accepted into the social fold of Vulcan culture, he realized how truly accessible the change in expression could truly be.

But beneath the façade of blameless wandering, basking in the emaciated glare of the withering season, there was true intent. Spock meant to discover a new muse for his lyrical tendencies, other than the disenchanting partiality for the beautiful Uhura.

His muse bore a name, and one of magnificent cultural splendor. She belonged somewhere pure and untarnished by society's expectation, her ancestry unmistakable from the sound of her name to the cool, rich brushstrokes of her dark russet skin.

He surmised this attraction to be based upon synthetic intrigue. The verity that she, in fact, assimilated with a place she affectionately called home was an enviable trait. His familiarizing with her beauty was merely a symptom of the male humanity in him, an artistic surplus that he could hardly imagining identifying her with solely on this establishment.

And, needless to say, she was matchless in her communicating talents.

Another desirable attribute.

He coveted her fortune, and yet his kinetic musings about the faraway threads of emotional attachment and the cataclysm of reason in the face of undaunted love were a result of her presence. A contradiction that nestled itself deep into Spock's disheveled mind.

Even as he walked, he sorted. Category after category, his thoughts became legible again. But no sooner did he gather the mettle to graze surfaces of untraced intrigue, all pragmatism was lost. Misplaced again, amongst the libertine gauze of self-deprecation, wrapping and shelving what was rightfully his to think freely.

It was almost automaton, the way his mind put away unwanted deliberation.

And so he resorted to simplistic thinking, as was his surrender. Such as the pale enchantments of the wilting blossoms, caught in a stirring wind, the particularly stunning shards of light refracting off distant waters.

These did not stir doubt, and therefore, the perplexing mists cleared.

Never had he felt so disoriented before about his identity, even when immersed in the agony of his tormentors' merciless affronts. Three particularly Vulcan faces, bereft of all sentiment and levity and light. Sheer drones draped in veneers of human skin, metallic beneath their thin deceptive shells.

Beautiful pretenders with sharp ears and inclined, censorious brows.

They had delved too deep, struck stones of insult upon equally sturdy stone walls. Weak foundations, and the partitions fell before their feet. He had lost all thought, and was reduced to the mindless animal of his human heritage.

Anger.

Antagonism.

_Weakness_.

These did not fare well in the eyes of logic and its strict philosophies.

His first sojourn was on the San Francisco shoreline. And the moment his footsteps burrowed into the yielding sand, he couldn't help but wonder how everything there, the sea and the sun and the distant horizon, could be so utterly picturesque.

The cry of the gulls and their dangling bodies like white silk floating overhead, their wings tipped with black. Breaking crests, frothing and mild as they reached for the stoic planes of land beneath their unfurling, watery fingers. The purr of the water itself, deep and peppered with caustic notes of brine, left him pleasantly throttled in the hollow wake of their melancholy opus.

It soothed the jagged edges of broken interest in Spock.

But hardly did it touch on the planes of inspiration, and he realized his folly in his attempt to scourge Uhura's lyrical prominence with such a clichéd theme. And so he passed on, a fractured half-ghost staggering through the sloping dunes of the shore.

Hands submerged deep within the secret folds of his pockets, his data slate like sleek rock beneath his palms and similarly useless in light of his dormant imagination.

For many miles he wandered. Hoping for his stillborn imagination to revive from premature death, and for a while, played the dubious mother doting on her breathless child. He put together fragments of lyric in his head, but dismantled them as their structure proved awkward and turned to rot the moment he matched them together.

Words became ghosts, hard to find and equally elusive in their darting to and fro between reality and the ideals of romance.

Museums, community parks and theaters offered no remedy for which he found himself wanting, despite their subliminal beauty or natural enchantments.

After numerous deficient attempts to arouse his abilities from their somnolent trance, Spock surrendered to apathy. Instead, he salvaged what was left of his emancipation and the faltering day with a detour into a coffee shop. Perhaps the only way to reawaken bleary incentive was to return to its origins.

It was a rather large cafe, and the warm, spicy fragrance of coffee beans wafted through the vicinity in whorls. Paper seemed to festoon the temperate atmosphere as well, and Spock was intrigued by the statistics of readers and writers, with their stylus pens and data slates spilled over tables, often times searching the air for words or innovative phrase.

In his inattentive scrutiny, on account of a particularly all-consuming bout of curiosity, Spock lost his sense of existing, lending it all to his eyes as they drank in, voraciously, the calming settings.

"Sir?"

Spock responded immediately to his unidentified address with a flutter of his unfocused gaze.

"Is there anything I can…help you with?"

"Negative. I am merely analyzing the tranquil atmosphere."

He surmised she had long since become accustomed to the standard formality of Vulcan propriety, as she did not seem even venturing into a noiseless inquiry after his reserve. And beneath his cleverly simplistic guise, Spock gleaned his reward of blessed disinterest from the clerk. From the store. From the rest of the nonchalant world.

"Commander?"

And yet, he was discovered. Exhumed from the death of shallow namesake of his identifiable other by a familiar voice. One with music hidden in underlying notes, sweet and soft and altogether interesting from the first moment it reached his ears.

"Cadet Uhura. I would inquire after your presence here, but it would prove futile as your entitlement to be here is as justified as my own," he turned to address the graceful, dark-russet skinned woman as she rose from her perch in a burgundy armchair, her data slate abandoned to mark her territory. "However, might I affirm the serendipity of our chance meeting?"

"I suppose you may," she offered him a smile, one that stroked the chords of cordiality. "If it suits you. Would you…like to join me, sir? I have an extra seat there. You look like you could use a rest, from…whatever it was that you were doing."

He'd never taken into consideration the aftermath and side-effects of useless ambling, especially within the corridors of such a vast city and its uncalculated diameter.

"I offer my gratitude in light of your invitation, Cadet Uhura." He proceeded to follow her to her seat and eased into the unoccupied burgundy cushion across from her. She took a sip of her drink, cradling the cup within the dark flesh of her palm, and then regarded his appearance with an objective eye.

"If you don't mind my asking, why are you wearing that hat?" A soft simmer of laughter penetrated her inquiry, and Spock reached absently for the cap which obscured his pretentiously Vulcan and contradictive features.

"It permits me anonymity, so that I may contemplate thought process without the intrusive observation of others. A disguise, if you will."

"People do have a bad habit of staring, don't they?"

"It is human nature to address that which contradicts their normalcy. I merely allowed them the ability to carry on with their own agendas, rather than deliberating mine.

"That's very…gracious of you, Commander Spock." She remarked, and Spock speculated that her commentary was genuine, and held no trickery which the complex traits of human sarcasm held.

"Might I inquire after the satisfaction of your holiday?" He ventured.

"Thank you it was actually…relaxing. Caught up on some reading, which was nice after a week of stress and schoolwork."

"Reading?"

"Yes, I know it's so strange…spending your day off reading…"Uhura commented.

"Not at all. I find the activity to be quite pleasurable."

"Well, I suppose you and I are the only ones, Commander." She observed wryly.

"If I may impose a personal query?"

"You know, you don't always have to ask permission to merely ask a question," she responded gently. "You may ask me whatever you like. You are my teacher after all…you have to answer all of my demanding questions five days a week. Quite a task, I'm pretty sure," she paused to chuckle, and Spock wondered, if he knew for certain he harbored the capability to fall in love without reason, that he would fall in love solely with her laugh. "The least I owe you is the freedom to ask me anything you want, in return."

"A sound reasoning, Cadet." Spock quirked his head, and the emergence of curved amusement began to line the walls of his wary expression.

"What's your question, sir? Ask away." She raised the rim of her mug to her lips.

"I was merely curious after your preference for novel genus…"

"Well, usually, I like a good medical or crime mystery, and sometimes I'll read Sterlin A. Brown or Nella Larsen. But lately, I've been drawn toward Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes."

"Your interests lie in the twentieth century African American literary movement? Fascinating." He blinked slightly, an indication of his piqued interest.

"Well, the Harlem Renaissance was a beginning. I've always liked beginnings. And poetry, of course."

"You harbor an affinity for lyric, Cadet?"

"It has a language all its own, Commander. And seeing as I enjoy the dialects of this universe, I find it hard to resist the delicate vernacular of poetry."

How could he possibly dictate the fathoms of her appeal, now, with their correlation in the heart of poetry? He enjoyed its illogical rhythms, its poignancy and abstract communication of human soul and mind. And she shared his affinity, derived from its splendor as sort of comfort that could never be manufactured from austere logic.

Fascinating, indeed.

Quite fascinating.

"Do you like poetry?" She asked, disuniting Spock from his thoughtful revering.

"I communicate my apologies. To what are you referring?"

"You can call me Uhura, Commander."

"Uhura," he auditioned the sound of her name upon his tongue, and decided its taste was agreeable in every sense of the word. "Your query?"

"I asked if you liked poetry." She reminded gently, a prod in the general direction of their conversation.

"It is aesthetically pleasing," Spock responded airily. "I enjoy its temperate musings and sentimental value, but seldom comprehend its meaning. The intricacies of humanity escape my level of understanding."

"Well, you are Vulcan. And forgive my stereotyping, but…your purging of emotion increases the likelihood that you wouldn't understand its intricacies."

"Agreed," He stated simply. "But it proves its ability to fascinate, under certain…conditions."

"Conditions?" Her brow dipped into its deeply knitted questioning. "You enjoy poetry for more than its aesthetic value, Commander Spock?"

"Indeed. Is it so perplexing that a Vulcan should derive pleasure from human creation?"

"Not at all." She looked rather smug in her findings. "In fact, I feel honored. My mother always said poetry was universal."

"Your mother is an intelligent woman. She is most certainly correct in her statement."

"Well, you know the old saying. 'Mother knows best'. I'd say that teaching me to love poetry would fall under that category. After all, it lead me here, to my love for language and the yearning to discover what's beyond that veil of stars…"

"A stunning choice of phrase. Veil of stars…I never contemplated the idea that the stars may be mere façade, to conceal something deeper behind their simplicity."

"In the older days, before Starfleet, we used to think the stars were it. The ultimate conundrum of space. That's where the saying came from…reach for the stars. It was like reaching for the ultimate possibility that there was existence beyond what we saw. That there's more to the universe than meets the eye."

"Your selection of conversation, Uhura, is intellectually stimulating, if I am permitted to comment on the matter?"

"You're allowed. It's a free country." She mildly teased. He noticed her cup was nearing its parched emptiness as she placed it in its former spot. "And thank you. I'm sure you have better things to do than sit here and talk about the universe with your student. Truth is, I got rather…lonely. Sitting here all by myself."

"You are most welcome. Humans are innately social creatures, and therefore their need for interaction is nearly constant."

"You know, for being Vulcan, you're surprisingly interesting."

"Half," he corrected her. "My mother is human, and therefore I inherited half of her humanity."

She seemed generally surprised by the unorthodox confession, and intrigued by the concept of his existence. He explored the possibility that, perhaps, Uhura had never reflected upon the capability of offspring between Vulcans and humans, and that she had now instantly deemed him an anomaly.

He began to resent his confession, as it had been spur of the moment conversing, as her eyes glittered with immersion.

And to think humans were the only contenders against the battle of impulse.

"Half Vulcan? Wow…I guess it's true that you learn something new everyday. This being one of them!"

"I must communicate my apologies. I am certain of the possibility that perhaps you may have desired to learn of the existence of Human-Vulcan reproduction from the source of a scholar."

"No, no..." She reached out, as if to proverbially allay his conflicts. "No need for apologies. It's just...I never thought about it before, humans and Vulcans. I am surprised. But…now that I am well…you know, thinking about it. It makes sense. We're universally the same, just…different belief systems. But, it must be hard…being torn between two very different worlds."

A flicker of falsehood transcended the lackluster glaze of his eyes. "The opposite, I assure you. In fact, I have learned much as the offspring of two culturally diverse worlds."

She drank the remaining contents of her tea cup, and Spock was convinced of her unacknowledged ability for console, feeling his discomforts wear away with the receding light outside the adjacent window. And the day had diminished fully before he'd had a chance to grasp its sparse offering of opportunity.

"You are a horrible liar, Commander. As are most Vulcans." She teased, her gaze flickering over the rim of her cup.

Spock's reaction was uncalculated by either party, but no sooner did he stand, he was consumed by the will to depart. Conversation had flown into tepid waters, where misplaced steps could lead to uncomfortable confessions. It was needless to say...he was opposed to reiterating the entirely dichotomy of his severed past.

"I offer my gratitude in permitting me to spend the remainder of the hour with you, Cadet Uhura."

"You're leaving? So soon?"

"Affirmative."

"Well, in that case, could we perhaps do this again sometime?"

"Do this again?"

"You know, meet somewhere and talk."

"Certainly."

"Same place, same time?" She asked, and when he gave a curt nod of his assent, she rose from the comforts of her position and disposed of her mug, the electronic whir of the automatic waste basket reminding Spock dully of the purring waterfront nearby. "I'll see you on Monday, Commander."

"Farewell, Cadet Uhura."

He watched her smile and disintegrate into the advent of night, like ashes crumbling and carried away by the brushing contact of the penetrating breeze. Her skin blended into the gloom, and he saw no more of her slim figure or even the swaying luster of her hair. She was gone, and abandoned Spock to his unkempt thoughts.

Suddenly, treacherous inspiration had come again. Abundant and lush, it flooded the parched gates of his mind and words came to him as fluidly as if they'd always been there. All the time, and always would be. Remembering his data slate, which he had carried with him for the exact reason that it was given its purpose, it emerged, nestled into his palm, from the dark ink blackness of his pocket and he retrieved his stylus.

Floods, words, abundance…

Russet skin and impenetrable dark eyes, mocha-dressed hands curving their length over her tea cup.

His muse was, and perhaps always would be, Uhura.

_Darkness, skin, akin to light,  
Only in shadow, its correlating tie,  
She deftly treads this fraying line,  
And she is darkness, and she is light_

_Abundance of soul, or none at all,  
She ruminates the melancholy song,  
Which repeats humanity's intolerable plight,  
She is darkness, she is the light_

_She speaks of the odyssey,  
Of an everlasting creed,  
Born of one world, and born of one solitary line,  
She is the darkness, and she is the light__  
_

_Vulcan_, by Anonymous. And he scrawled the christening across the bottom of his glowing screen.

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE: As for this particular chapter, it took me approximately four hours to write. Not to mention the fine tuning and retracing of steps for grammatical correction and rephrasing of obviously awkwardly structured sentences. I feel that, given the amount of time it takes for me to complete a chapter, I will update every two days or so, perhaps one if I my stamina proves it is up for the challenge. I would like to thank all who reviewed, as feedback is quite graciously welcomed.

Thank you for taking the time to read my prose. Poetry is written by me.

Disclaimer - Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry and JJ Abrams.


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